My Novice Investor Diaryhttps://alibro.wordpress.com
Don't follow me, I'm lost too!Sun, 18 Feb 2018 06:42:43 +0000en-GBhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngMy Novice Investor Diaryhttps://alibro.wordpress.com
My timing aint gettin any better :(https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/things-aint-gettin-any-better/
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 23:10:54 +0000http://alibro.wordpress.com/?p=250Continue reading →]]>I’d love to be able to say my buying was improving but unfortunately not. Or maybe more accurate to say my selling isn’t improving. What I mean by that is I’ve bought 10 different companies since the 26th of Jan, buying 19 different times and sold 8 times. Of the 8 sales i’d have been better off keeping the shares for longer 6 times. I think what this means is my picking wasn’t the problem in most cases but my lack of patience and on several occasions panick selling when i should have been sitting.

Anyway two more shares I bought are Everaz PLC and WS Atkins.

22/3 Everaz 460 @ 219.23p

3/4 WS Atkins 39 @ 1886p

To be honest I’m not even 100% sure what they do but I think Everaz is a mining and steel company and WS Atkins is some kind of architecture company. I bought Everaz because it seemed to be on an upward curve price wise and i bought WS Atkins because i heard it was due for a takeover. At time of writing i still have Everaz and for a while it was doing really well peaking at 240p but has since fallen back. I think I’ll hold it for a while longer though. As previously stated selling too early has been my biggest mistake.

WS Atkins is another matter, like i mentioned I bought it because of news of a takeover. Had i bought at the right time this would have been a great move. Buying after the price had stopped rising however wasnt sensible at all. I quickly realised I’d been stupid and sold again losing only the the fees and a few quid. Another lesson learned about looking before you leap.

My last purchase is another pick from Malcys bucket list. This is a list of up and coming oil companies he draws up every year, using his knowledge of tbe industry.

10/4 VOG 1530 @ 77.75p

13/4 VOG 1400 @ 71.992p

Victoria Oil And Gas is a company drilling in Cameroon and from what I’ve heard has made some good finds. It is also already supplying to customers in Cameroon. This one might be a bit of a punt but so far so good. At least this time I did some research before buying but it remains to be seen whether I’m better off relying on dumb luck.

]]>alibro53Dogs with Fleas! but then I beat the system!!!!!https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/dogs-with-fleas-but-then-i-beat-the-system/
Mon, 10 Apr 2017 23:25:16 +0000http://alibro.wordpress.com/?p=202Continue reading →]]>Last time I admitted to my biggest biggie so far Acacia Mining. This time I have to admit to doing three more dodgy deals.

24/2 AA PLC 400 @ 257.8p

15/3 Dechra Pharm 60 @ 1701p

31/1 Lloyds Bank 1445 @ 66.5p

I call these dodgy but I guess given time they will probably rise. I bought them after hearing good results or reading good things about them but followed my well proven method of buying at the peak of a rise just in time to watch them fall. In my novice world all my shares are supposed to rise every day so to see three of them slump by over 7% in Lloyds case is depressing. Thankfully I have bought back into JOG recently and over three purchases got my holding up to 1000 shares which are going very nicely. The combined cost is around 307p with a price at time of writing of 315p.

In my headline I hinted at a success so this is it. Before I start I just want to say sorry for the smugness.

On Thursday night 6/4 I decided to try and play the market by selling a block of shares when the price peaked, then buy back when the price dipped. I had noticed a pattern of peaking in the morning and dipping in the afternoon, add to that the Friday PM dip which seems to be a thing and I figured I was onto a winner.

So I set a limit order to sell 650 @ 325p on Friday morning and watched the price on the Yahoo App running on my phone. It reached 326 at one point so I thought they had sold, unfortunately either the Yahoo App isn’t very accurate or a sale had occurred at 326p but I didn’t happen to be the seller. Either way when I checked the price on X-O it was 323.5p. I figured this was close enough so I cancelled the limit order and sold them at best. 323.5p gave me a healthy profit so even if part II of the plan failed I was still in pocket. That was around 10:30am I then set a new limit order to buy 665 @ 315p and waited. I was busy at work for a few hours but as I was driving home the price was still around 318p, then at around 4pm the price suddenly dipped and I had bought again. Even better, when I checked I had only paid 312p for them. Not sure how that happened but I ain’t complaining. Even more betterrer, I hadn’t realised JOG is in the AIM market not the FTSE 100 or 250 so there is no stamp duty to pay. That put an extra tenner in me back pocket I hadn’t reconned on. I had turned 650 shares into 665 and put an extra £15 in the kitty so I now have 1015 shares in Jersey Oil and Gas.

BTW my confidence in the rise of JOG is down to hearing they have partnered with Statoil to drill a new oil well and from hearing from an Oil Expert called Malcy that they are almost guaranteed to reach £5 by August in the run up to drilling.

I hope he is right.

]]>alibro53Oops, I just lost my shirt.https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/oops-i-just-lost-my-shirt/
Sun, 09 Apr 2017 23:19:01 +0000http://alibro.wordpress.com/?p=171Continue reading →]]>On the same day i sold Capita (wrong) I also bought Acacia Mining (very very wrong).

15/2 ACA.L 200 @ 524p

In my defence they were a profitable company and from the brief checks I made I don’t think it is intrinsically a dog but how was I to know the government of Tanzania was going to ban it from exporting gold and copper concentrates, just a few days after I bought it. Suffice to say, by the time I discovered the issue the share price had plummeted close to 20%. I held on for a few weeks hoping a few gold nuggets tossed the right direction might free up the ban but eventually gave up and sold the lot for 444.70p making a whopping loss of £175. Ouch!

If I had held tight the issue would probably have been resolved and the share price go up again but when I heard they were loosing something like £1m a day I decided to cut my losses and sold.

The day after selling all my JOG shares at the bottom of a dip I put my new found wealth into two more companies. By following my brilliant plan to buy the highest rising companies when at they’re dearest point I bought the following.

23/2 Mondi PLC 55 @1898p

23/2 Micro Focus 44 @2241p

I held onto Micro Focus for a couple of weeks and yes you’ve guessed it, sold in a dip just before they rose. I made a small profit of £12 or 1.2% but at the time of writing this blog they’ve risen by over 5%.

Mondi is bumbling along doing very little so I’ve set a limit order to sell at 1999p which would make a small profit but would release funds for something more interesting.

Next time more of the same, I buy three more dogs with fleas.

Aargh!

]]>alibro53And then it all went downhillhttps://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/and-then-it-all-went-downhill/
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 23:19:58 +0000http://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/and-then-it-all-went-downhill/Continue reading →]]>Last time i posted about my great success buying Jersey Oil And Gas and how I made loads a money. I couldn’t believe how easy it was so of course I can do it again. Or maybe not!

14 Feb RBS 450@239.95p. As well as buying more stock in JOG i also bought that much loved and super well run bank, RBS . Yes I am that stupid. Believe it or not I actually thought they couldn’t still be that bad and figured the year end results would prove me right.

Doh!

I woke on the morning the results were announced to hear of their horrendous depts, ran to the computer and sold the lot for 244.15p just before the price crashed. Thankfully I still managed a small profit of £10.65 or just under 1% so I count that as a lucky escape as it is still down from the price I got for it.

15 Feb sold Capita 200@519.05 Like I said in my previous post Capita wasn’t performing as well as JOG so of course it must be a dud so I sold it. To be honest I don’t know enough about the company to be able to comment on how good it is but sufice to say since selling it has risen by around 10% so that’s how good my call was. In fact it was doing so well I bought it again

27 Feb Capita 180@549p Needless to say since buying again they’ve done nothing but I’ll probably hold them for a little longer this time.

Next post I’ll fess up to the biggy. This is the one that so far anyway hurts the most.

]]>alibro53Didn’t I do Well!https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/didnt-i-do-well/
https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/didnt-i-do-well/#respondTue, 04 Apr 2017 22:29:33 +0000http://alibro.wordpress.com/?p=117Continue reading →]]>Last time I posted I told you a little bit about why I was doing it, what my strategy was going to be, what my first purchases were and why I chose them. If you read it and know anything at all about share dealing you’ll have spotted straight away I hadn’t got the first clue what I was doing or why. It’ll come as a surprise then that I still have my pants and shirt on and I actually made a profit.

Capita was my first share which I bought for 503.82p on the 26th Jan 17. This one kinda bumbled along a bit not really going anywhere so I sold it again on the 15th Feb for the princely sum of 519.05p. Not earth shattering by any means but it covered the buying and selling costs with a small profit of £13.52 or 1.33%. Way better than anything available from banks but I won’t be dining out on the strength of it.

Jersey Oil and Gas bought for 141p on the other hand faired a little better, I bought it on the same day as Capita and was amazed to see it rise so quickly that on the 14th Feb I bought another 500 shares for 190p I then sat on these 1200 shares for a week or so watching them rise until the 20th Feb when they started to fall. Now bearing in mind I’m a total novice I started to worry so when they fell again the next day I panicked and sold the lot for 201.07p. Not exactly a disaster as I still made £448.33 on them but guess what happened the next day? Yip they started going back up again, quickly reaching 260p before slowly falling back to 213p. Then on March 23rd the company got good news that StatOil has agreed to drill for them in August and the shares soared again up to a peak of 336p. When I saw them rising I decided to jump in again and managed to grab some on the 3rd Apr for 297p then a second batch for 308p. At close of play 4th Apr they had actually fallen again to 291.5p but I’m confident they will rise again and continue to rise until close to the date of drilling sometime in August. I’m anticipating this share will fluctuate a lot so am going to have a go at selling and buying with limit orders to try and make a few quid. We’ll see how that goes and report back.

I have to admit that picking JOG was pure beginners luck. My strategy from the start was based on the simple premise that a rising share is more likely to rise than a falling share, so I watched for rising shares, spotted JOG and bought it without really knowing anything about the company. The best thing about starting with a winner was I didn’t have to worry so much about the following purchases as I had a nice buffer to play with.

Next time I’ll talk about the other shares I bought, I might even admit to the disastrous one that lost me approx £200.

]]>https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/didnt-i-do-well/feed/0alibro53Am I mad, stupid or BOTH? I bought some shares!https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/am-i-mad-or-stupid-i-bought-shares/
https://alibro.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/am-i-mad-or-stupid-i-bought-shares/#respondSun, 02 Apr 2017 22:09:22 +0000http://alibro.wordpress.com/?p=84Continue reading →]]>In common with most people I’m not happy with the interest I’m getting from banks and building societies so after Santander reduced their interest rate to 1.5% I decided to do something about it. No not something sensible like investing in an ISA but something probably very very stupid but hopefully fun. A few months ago I opened an account with X-O, pumped a few grand into it and bought some shares. This is what I bought/sold and why.

I made a few decisions before I started.

I would buy at least £1000 worth of each share. This is because the cost of buying and selling would be too great (percentage wise) to buy any less. If buying £1000 worth of shares using even a cheap broker like X-O where the dealing fees are £5.95, the cost of buying and selling (with 0.5% stamp duty) is approx 1.6%. This means your shares have to increase by 1.6% before you make a penny. Obviously buying more means the purchase fees are less of an issue but I am a novice and don’t have that much in savings so I’ll stick with £1000 at a time for now.

I will try to spread my money across 8-10 different shares from different sectors to try and reduce the risks. At the minute I have 7 different shares as I’m still feeling my way.

The reasons for buying and selling I’d make up as I go along. Smart thinking eh

26/1/17 Capita 200@503.82p Bought because I thought they might be in the running for a contract I knew was up for grabs.

31/1/17 Jersey Oil and Gas 700@141p Bought because I figured the price of oil can only go up and I liked the way the price was rising (they happened to be the biggest riser that day).

Being very unsure I’d done the right thing I sat for a couple of weeks to see what would happen. To my surprise JOG did very well so I decided to buy some more plus (because they could only get better, right?) RBS